Tag Archives: science

The New York Times reports: In the worldwide race for a vaccine to stop the coronavirus, the laboratory sprinting fastest is at Oxford University. The Oxford scientists now say that with an emergency approval from regulators, the first few million doses of their vaccine could be available by September — at least several months ahead of any of the other …

CNBC reports: Citing a “primary outcome” of death, researchers cut short a study testing anti-malaria drug chloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19 after some patients developed irregular heart beats and nearly two dozen died after taking doses daily. Scientists say the findings, published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, should prompt some degree of skepticism from …

Reuters reports: Commercial buildings shuttered for weeks to stem the spread of the coronavirus could fuel another grisly lung infection: Legionnaires’ disease. Public health experts are urging landlords across the globe to carefully re-open buildings to prevent outbreaks of the severe, sometimes lethal, form of pneumonia. The sudden and sweeping closures of schools, factories, businesses and government offices have created …

The BBC reports: The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun in Oxford. Two volunteers were injected, the first of more than 800 people recruited for the study. Half will receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and half a control vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus. The design of the trial means volunteers will not know …

NBC San Francisco reports: An autopsy report has revealed the first COVID-19-related death in the United States happened much earlier than previously thought. Officials in Santa Clara County, California, initially reported its first coronavirus death March 9, but an autopsy revealed there was one in the county on Feb. 6. Not only is it the first death in the county, …

NPR reports: A panel of experts convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities. “The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was associated with QTc prolongation in patients with COVID-19,” the panel said. QTc prolongation increases the risk of …

The New York Times reports: The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday said it had granted emergency clearance to the first in-home test for the coronavirus, a nasal swab kit that will be sold by LabCorp. The agency said that LabCorp had submitted data showing the home test is as safe and accurate as a sample collection at a doctor’s …

The Associated Press reports: A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported. The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest …

The South China Morning Post reports: A new study by one of China’s top scientists has found the ability of the new coronavirus to mutate has been vastly underestimated and different strains may account for different impacts of the disease in various parts of the world. Professor Li Lanjuan and her colleagues from Zhejiang University found within a small pool …

ABC News reports: The first large-scale community test of 3,300 people in Santa Clara County found that 2.5 to 4.2% of those tested were positive for antibodies — a number suggesting a far higher past infection rate than the official count. Based on the initial data, researchers estimate that the range of people who may have had the virus to …

The Jerusalem Post reports: The novel COVID-19, despite previous suspicions, is capable of surviving prolonged exposure to high temperatures, according to a study by the University of Aix-Marseille in France, led by Professor Remi Charrel and Boris Pastorino. In the experiment, scientists found that typically hot temperatures of 60° Celsius (140° Fahrenheit) used to disinfect research labs are ineffective against …

STAT News reports: A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned. Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the …

ESPN reports: Employees of Major League Baseball teams are participating in a massive study that will test up to 10,000 people for coronavirus antibodies and should offer researchers a better sense of how widespread the disease is in major metropolitan areas across the United States, although doctors caution that the data gathered is not expected to hasten the game’s return. …

CNBC reports: World Health Organization officials said Monday not all people who recover from the coronavirus have the antibodies to fight a second infection, raising concern that patients may not develop immunity after surviving Covid-19. “With regards to recovery and then reinfection, I believe we do not have the answers to that. That is an unknown,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive …

The New York Times reports: A small study in Brazil was halted early for safety reasons after coronavirus patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine developed irregular heart rates that increased their risk of a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia. Roughly half the study participants were given a dose of 450 milligrams of chloroquine twice daily for five days, while the …

The Associated Press reports: The top U.S. infectious disease official says coronavirus antibody tests are just days away. Dr. Anthony Fauci says at the last White House coronavirus task force meeting, the people responsible for developing, validating and disseminating the tests were saying “a rather large number of tests” will be available within a week. Fauci told CNN on Friday …

The New York Times reports: New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia. “The majority is clearly European,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote …

The Associated Press reports: Doctors around the world are dusting off a century-old treatment for infections: Infusions of blood plasma teeming with immune molecules that helped survivors beat the new coronavirus. There’s no proof it will work. But former patients in Houston and New York were early donors, and now hospitals and blood centers are getting ready for potentially hundreds …

Roll Call reports: A top FDA official Thursday sought to assure a U.S. public still wondering if COVID-19 can be transmitted by food and feeling unsettled by grocery shelves empty of their favorite foods. Frank Yiannas, Food and Drug Administration deputy commissioner of food policy and response, acknowledged during a press call that the United States has entered a “new …

NBC News reports: Amid what it’s calling an “urgent need for blood,” the FDA revised its blood donor guidelines on Thursday, significantly easing the restrictions on men who have sex with men. The new guidelines reduce the donation deferral period for sexually active gay and bisexual men from 12 months to three, meaning these otherwise healthy men will now have …